We flew back to Sardinia yesterday as we planned to take the boat out of the water to do some routine maintenance work. We needed to repair the paintwork where the shaft anode had ground into the hull in Mallorca as well as generally check below the waterline. However, the weather gods have other ideas. The temperature was quite pleasant when we arrived from the airport at 17 degrees but the sky looked grey and foreboding. The forecast wasn’t great with 40+ knots of wind due to arrive over the course of Weds and Thurs and then again on Sunday/Monday. The rain lashed down all night but the winds weren’t more than 18 knots so we had our fingers crossed that they could lift us out of the water sometime today. We walked round to the boatyard in torrential rain to speak to the guys but knew in our hearts that it was extremely unlikely. The windy (ventoso) conditions were due in soon and tomorrow (Thursday) was a definite no-go so we now have Friday pencilled in but it will depend on whether this front goes through quicker than expected and that the next one doesn’t arrive too soon as we have booked our return flight for Tuesday. If we can’t get her back in the water on Monday we will be incurring charges of €50 per day until we do so that could turn out to be very expensive, especially as we have a paid for berth already! As it happens, the wind picked up as soon as we got back to the boat, registering over 30 knots by 11am so today was definitely out.

If we had been in the UK we could have just decided not to go down to the boat and arrange for the lift out next week without any of the complications of air travel. In hindsight, maybe we shouldn’t have booked our return flight but the price goes up exponentially as you near the departure date so you are caught either way. The upside is that we can do our Xmas shopping here and learn some more Italian as we are both woefully poor at anything other than the basics although we do now know a few nautical terms!